The Assistant

Today was the day Lucas was going to introduce me to his team as the new assistant coach. I guess you could say I was nervous. If my jumpiness didn't give it away, then maybe it was my shaky leg.

My French class was in the middle of a unit test (three weeks into the new school year and I have a test! Just great.) and my right leg couldn't stop shaking, causing my desk to make some squeaking sounds. My French teacher, Mr. Beauregard (or should I say, Monsieur Beauregard), looked over at me.

"Êtes-vous d'accord, Madame Kinsella?" He's asking me if I'm okay.

"Oui je le suis. Je vous remercie de là. Je suis juste un peu nerveux, c'est tout." I answered back easily. I just told him that I was okay and that I'm nervous.

"Eh bien, avez-vous étudié? Parce que si vous l'avez fait, vous ne devriez pas être aussi nerveux." Now he's telling me that if I studied, which I did, I wouldn't be nervous.

"Je l'ai fait, Monsieur Beauregard. J'ai simplement venir quelque chose de plus tard, et c'est juste me rend nerveux." I did, Mr. Beauregard. I just have something coming up later and it's just making me nervous..

"Bon alors. Juste respirer, d'accord? Vous pouvez continuer." He just told me to breathe.
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. Mr. Beauregard smiled at me.

Mr. Beauregard was a cool teacher, always cared for his students. He was a new teacher at Bennett Secondary when I started high school here in grade nine. He's been one of my favourite teachers ever since.

At the end of the class, I had completed my test and went up to the front to hand it in. Mr. Beauregard took it from me.

"Are you sure you're okay, Julia?" He asked me one more time, a light french accent in check whenever he spoke English.

"I am, thank you." I said and walked out of the class.

One more period left.

I walked down the staircase to the main gym and opened the doors to the girls changeroom. A few of my friends were already in there changing into the gym uniform. Bennett Secondary's gym uniform consisted of a grey t-shirt with a wolf's head on it and in red varsity looking font, above and below the head, read 'Bennett Wolves', and a pair of dark blue navy shorts with a small wolf head on the corner of one of the legs.

I was a total dude when it came to wearing the shorts underneath my jogging pants. So I took off my jogging pants and shirt, only to be left with shorts and a sports bra on me. The usual joking around started when more people started coming in.

"Damn Kinsella you look fine!" My friend, Sierra, hollered from the other side of the room. I laughed and put on the uniform shirt.

"Yeah sure, Wilson!" I yelled back as a reply.

The girls, including myself, started filtering out into the gym. The guys were already there, pushing and shoving each other on the floor. Our gym teacher, Mrs. Hanson, walked through the double gym doors and blew her whistle with the attendance clipboard in hand.

"Okay I'm gonna take attendance. Anderson," she started off. She always called us by our last names instead of first.

"Here."

"Arman,"

"Here!"

Mrs. Hanson went through the list, one by one and then called my name.

"Kinsella."

"Hi." I answered. She and some of the class laughed at my response.

She went through the rest of the attendance and then blew her whistle again.

"Okay class. Today we will be starting volleyball." She yelled.

A few of the guys groaned while my friends and I cheered.

We helped set up both nets onto the gym floor while Mrs. Hanson split us up into four teams. She ended up splitting all the girls into two teams and all of the guys into another two. Girls playing the boys, I guess.

The team I was on consisted of girls from my hockey team.

"Okay what are we gonna do, captain?" Cece Hall asked me. She was pretty tiny for a
hockey player, being only 5'3". She was very energetic on the ice. And she was very loud too.

I ran through the starting positions with them and they fixed themselves on the court. I was in the front row, position two to be exact. The team we were playing consisted of three guys from our male counterpart baseball team (so basically our dude baseball team) and three other guys.

After Mrs. Hanson dealt with the other team, she came over to our court.

"Can the captains of the teams please come here?" She asked. Jason Whitten and I walked over to her. On our way there, we started shoving each other. We were like brother and sister.

"Okay, heads or tails?"

"Heads." Jason said.

"Tails." I replied.

She tossed the coin up in the air and caught it with her hand. Heads. The guys cheered and I retreated back into my position, shaking my head.

Jason was the first one to serve. He stood behind the black service line and threw the ball into the air. As it went down, he smacked it hard and it flew to our side. Bronwyn Paloma bumped it to our setter, Gayle Powell, who then volleyed it to me and I spiked it down onto the hardwood floor. 1-0 girls.

We rotated and this time I was serving. I bounced the ball hard onto the floor a few times and threw it high. I smacked it and the ball found a hole between Jason and Augustus Patterson, the baseball team's third baseman. The volleyball landed with a thud. 2-0 girls.

Man, I loved this class.

****************************

The final score for our game was 25-9, girls. The guys were all in a grumpy mood after that. I don't blame them though.

I went back up to my locker, already changed into my outfit from earlier. My locker was strategically placed on one of the floors with a lot of the school's athletes. But it's not like non-athletes didn't have lockers there. The school had two of these floors and then everyone else was scattered around. Everyone referred to them as "Jock Landing".

I grabbed my backpack and duffel. After slipping on my red Bennett Secondary hoodie, I whistled to Sierra.

"I'm gonna go to Lucas now, Coach O'Shea knows what's up." I said to her. She looked over at me and wished me good luck.

I ran down the stairs and into the parking lot, bumping into a few people with the huge duffel I carried. I unlocked the trunk of the GMC Terrain and threw in the bags, then got into the driver's side. Before I started up the car, I called Lucas letting him know I was on my way there.

The drive to the rink only lasted fifteen minutes and before I knew it, I was pulling into the parking lot beside Lucas' car. I hopped out of the car, throwing on my Blue Jays ball cap and grabbing my skates.

Guys started filtering onto the ice by the time I walked the sliding doors. As I was walking to Lucas' office and watching them glide around, I noticed a few familiar faces from the guys' baseball team. Some of them started to notice and directed their attention towards me.
The door to the office was already open and I found Lucas lacing up.

"Oh hi Jules." He said giving me one look and went back down to his skates.

"Hey. Did you want me to put mine on or...?" I trailed off.

"It would be great if you did. I'll introduce you to the team," he smiled.

I went over to one the chairs and put them on. Then a thought occurred to me.

"Lucas, I have a question for you."

"Okay, shoot."

"Do they know that a girl is going to be one of their coaches?"

He scratched the back of his head.

"Ha, no, not really. I informed them that Carranza was leaving and that I did find another coach, but I kind of left that part out, so..."

I stopped fixing the laces and looked up at him.

"Lucas."

"I'm sorry! It totally slipped my mind, I'm sure it'll be fine, they're a good bunch."

"Yeah they better be," I muttered.

He walked out the door and I followed suit. The guys split up on two sides of the ice. They were all just skating towards the goalie, shooting it at him, then circling back to the line. Both Lucas and I stepped onto the slippery surface and he blew his silver whistle.

"Ten laps around the ice then meet me by the bench!" He ordered.

I could hear a few of them groan as they set themselves up at center. They were positioned so half of them were faced one way and the other half another way. My cousin blew the whistle once more and they were off.

I cautiously skated over to the bench area and propped myself onto the ledge, my legs dangling over. As I watched them skate around, I counted them. There were twenty five of them.

After their ten laps, Lucas skated over to where I was and everyone else gathered around. They all directed their attention towards me.

"Okay guys. You know how I told you that Coach Carranza was leaving due to some very serious family matters?" He started off. They nodded their heads.

"And that I found a coach to replace him?" This time, they all nodded their heads slower.

"Well, she's right over there." Now it was my turn to look at them.

A few of them had shocked faces, a few of them looked confused. and the ones I knew from the baseball team (the one Whitten was plays for) had smirks on their faces.

"Julia?" My cousin motioned for me. That was my cue to jump off the board and introduce myself.

"Uh hey. I'm Julia but I guess since I'm your new assistant coach, Coach Markley would want you guys to refer to me as Coach Kinsella. I also don't mind if you called me Coach Kinsey."
I scanned the team. I recognized the guy that bumped into me on my way out when Lucas called me those two weeks ago. It was Carter Sinclair. And just like that moment, he didn't seem too happy about this one. I knew why though, so I decided to call him out on it.

"Is there something you would like to say, Sinclair?" I arched my brow. Lucas looked over at Carter.

"No." He answered.

"Are you sure? Because by the look on your face, you don't seem pleased at the moment."

"I'm sure."

I looked at him a little bit longer, rolled my eyes, and then redirected my attention to the whole team again.

"Okay then. If any of you have a problem with having a female as one of your coaches like your teammate over here, take it up with Markley. Even though I know he won't listen to you.
So just say it now if you have a problem with me being here to save yourself some trouble."
They all looked at one another and shook their heads at me. Carter just glared.

"No one? Good. I think I'm done introductions, Lucas."

"Would you like to set up some rules between you and the players, Jules?" he asked.
I shook my head.

"I don't think so, unless something happens between me and the players that's when I'll make up some rules, I guess."

Lucas resumed to talking about their season and how he expects them to work much more harder than the last. As he was talking, I couldn't help but notice Sinclair still glaring at me. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. He seriously needs to get over this. Lucas doesn't plan on changing his mind about this any time soon.

A notification sound snapped me out of my thoughts. Lucas turned around to me. I smiled sheepishly. I pulled out my phone and the screen read, "One New Snapchat from Bozie42".
It was a Snapchat video from Tyler. I unwound the earbuds and put them in my ears, watching the video. It was a video of the team just fooling around in the workout room of the Mastercard Center. I replied back with a picture of what was currently happening with me and added the words "i am now a coach ayee". A few minutes later, he started texting me.

From: Bozak
>oh so you're a coach now, huh?

To: Bozak
>lol yeah, Lucas just introduced me to the team a few minutes ago

From: Bozak
>you'll do great Coach Kinsella ;)

To: Bozak
>thaaaanks now get back to working out i think you gained some pounds during the offseason :P

Hopefully he took my advice and started exercising because after I had sent that text, he didn't reply back.

Practice ended two hours later and in that time I had gotten to know a few of the guys. Turns out, ten players were Bennett Secondary students and I hadn't noticed some of them until now. The ones I did know were Carter Sinclair, Thomas Brunt, Jason Mesa, and Tyler Neilsen.

The guys from the baseball team called me over.

"What? Being captain of your team wasn't enough for you Kinsella?" Tristan Granby, the catcher, teased. I laughed.

"Totally. And since when did you guys play hockey?" I replied.

Turns out they played hockey just as long as they played baseball. I started hockey two years after I started playing baseball. Baseball was my first love. After a few minutes of chatter, Michael Carston mentioned something.

"Guess our captain isn't happy about having you replace Carranza..." he said.

"Captain?" I asked, clearly oblivious.

"Yeah. Carter over there is the team's captain." He nodded his head in Carter's direction.

Well fuck this, I thought. The captain hates me.

Notes